Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

There's more to the Ketuvim section of the Tanakh than that - Only Josephus' arrangement of the books that all Jews thought contained "divine doctrines" is different, is all. The arrangement of the books may not have been finalized by his time. And, as quoted before, After the Romans destroyed the ...

MrMacSon wrote: Significantly, there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed: some scholars argue that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty, while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later. Jacob Neusner has argued the notion of a biblical...

Come on, Ben, what do YOU think happened?

I'm thinking perhaps the correspondences between the Johannine letters and Mark and Matthew could be due to them all being Nazarene writings and thus that the letter writer(s) may not have needed to know Mark and Matthew and could even pre-date them and been known by Mark and Matthew. And while I th...

But despite orthodox interpolations, the religion in the synoptic gospels, Acts and most of the NT letters looks like Fourth Philosophic Judaism to me, e.g., rejection of the oral Torah, the belief that "one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth," the retention of Pharisa...

But despite orthodox interpolations, the religion in the synoptic gospels, Acts and most of the NT letters looks like Fourth Philosophic Judaism to me, e.g., rejection of the oral Torah, the belief that "one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth," the retention of Pharisai...

MrMacSon wrote: I'm intrigued that we hear about Celsus so relatively late (via Origen's Contra Celsus) My understanding is that Celsus lived during the mid to late second century CE though, which is the time of orthodox ascendancy in my view, and the passage I had in mind is this one: 27. [Celsus' ...

I'm just curious what people here think. You don't have to prove everything, just say what you think happened to produce Christianity. Fill in the gaps however you like. Here's what I think. There were broadly three sects of Judaism since the time of the Maccabees, like Josephus says. By 6 CE a four...

Ben wrote: Interestingly, Elymas in Acts 13 is both a Cypriot and a magician, and Bezae renders his name with Ἐτοίμας, which resembles a Greek adjective meaning "ready," but also resembles a cross between Elymas and Atomos: Is Elymas/Etoimos in Acts 13:6-11 the same person called Bar Jesus? And if ...

Ben wrote: Interestingly, Elymas in Acts 13 is both a Cypriot and a magician, and Bezae renders his name with Ἐτοίμας, which resembles a Greek adjective meaning "ready," but also resembles a cross between Elymas and Atomos: Is Elymas/Etoimos in Acts 13:6-11 the same person called Bar Jesus? And if n...